In the early hours of Friday, Colbert had caught wind of the imbroglio and took to his personal account @StephenAtHome to clarify that his Comedy Central show’s verified Twitter account is not written by him. He also suggested that doesn’t even know who writes it. The Colbert Show Twitter account also tweeted a series of messages saying its host had nothing to do with the joke gone wrong.

“Nothing to do with the joke gone wrong”? The “ching chong ding dong” tweet was a direct quote from Colbert. He made the remark on his show earlier this week as can be seen in the video tweeted last night by both The Colbert Report and Colbert.